Aston Villa suffered a 1-0 defeat at Man Utd on Sunday, and Unai Emery was unsurprisingly disappointed with the performance, but remained upbeat.
A first-half goal from Bruno Fernandes was ultimately all that split the two sides, but it was a poor display from Villa, particularly in the first half, as we were sloppy and failed to get a real foothold in the game.
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While we did continue to push in the second half in search of an equaliser and had our moments, we couldn’t show a cutting edge to our play and ultimately return home empty-handed.
There is undoubtedly an element of tiredness impacting our performances now, and so it’s hoped that not only can the players regroup and bounce back at Wolves next weekend, but also that Emery gets some options back from injury to freshen things up and rotate where possible.
The Villa boss was happier with our second-half display, but he’ll no doubt take a lot from the game on how we can continue to improve and try to finish the season well with four Premier League games to go.
“In ninety minutes you have to be more consistent, try to control the game like we are trying to build,” he told BBC Sport. “But of course we are playing against Manchester United, they were pushing us, playing in their stadium with their supporters.
“We didn’t have our usual personality that we have in the first half. In the second half we improved and were better to reduce the distance. We didn’t get a lot of good chances but the second half was better for us and we could have scored one goal. We tried to be strong in our game plan.
“We were trying to progress quickly and trying to avoid risk but in football you have to take risks to improve. We were competitive in the second half and I think today was a bad result but the match gave us a lot of information.”
Results this weekend could see us fall to seventh place in the standings, while Brighton have three games in hand on us and sit just two points adrift.
In turn, we simply have to continue to focus on ourselves and getting wins to finish the campaign, and time will tell where that leaves us.
Emery will of course want to see a response from his players next weekend and a return to the style and identity that we’ve been building under him, but it remains to be seen if we’ve got enough left in the tank and can bounce back with a strong performance to get our European charge back on track.